


Safety Plan

by PoppyAlexander



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Arson, Blow Jobs, Commissioned fic, Concerned Sherlock, Dirty Talk, Established Relationship, Face-Fucking, Fire, Hand Jobs, Impulse control disorder, M/M, New Relationship, Post-Episode: s02e02 The Hounds of Baskerville, Power Dynamics, Pyromania, Rough Oral Sex, Sherlock Respecting Boundaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 13:29:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5968954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoppyAlexander/pseuds/PoppyAlexander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson struggles with a dangerous compulsion, one which he thought he'd conquered. When Sherlock recognizes John's struggle, he takes steps to accommodate John's needs in their private life, as well as to protect John from the possible fallout of his risky behaviour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safety Plan

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was commissioned by a Lovely Reader who prefers to remain anonymous.

Thank you for participating in this important Mental Health survey. Our research will help further understanding of the impact of compulsive thoughts and behaviour on the day-to-day lives of patients and their loved ones, as well as provide vital data for development of effective treatment options.

Your identity and data are secure and your participation is wholly anonymous. Your survey responses will be assigned a randomly-generated identification number. Preliminary survey results may be posted after the survey period; please check back in 3 – 6 months if you are interested in a general overview of findings.

Gender:               F              **M**             Prefer Not to Answer

Age Range:         18 – 24                  25 – 34                  **35 – 44**                   45 – 49                  50+

Have you been clinically diagnosed with a compulsive disorder?                                **Y**              N

Please specify your diagnosis:    **Impulse-Control Disorder:  Pyromania**

Who made this diagnosis:            GP/Nurse            **Psychiatrist**         Social Worker    Other (specify):

At what age were you first clinically diagnosed?

Under 12 yrs      **13 – 18 yrs**            19 – 29 yrs           30+ yrs

At what age did you first experience symptoms of your compulsion (thoughts or action)?

 **Under 12 yrs**       13 – 18 yrs           19 – 29 yrs           30+ yrs

Have you received treatment for your compulsion?        **Y**              N

Please specify modes of treatment including medications, modes of therapy, and/or other:

**Prozac, Efexor, Cipramil, talk therapy, cognitive-behavioural therapy, group therapy, 12-step addiction therapy, safety plan, ECT**

Which of these modes of treatment did you find most beneficial (if any)?

**Medication, safety plan.**

Are you currently receiving regular treatment to address your compulsion?         Y              **N**

In the past six months, have you experienced compulsive thoughts?      **Y**              N

In the past six months, have your compulsive thoughts interfered with your day-to-day activities?   **Y**    N

In the past six months, have you acted on your compulsion?       **Y**              N

In the past month, how often have you experienced compulsive thoughts?

 **more than once a day**  
daily  
a few times a week  
about weekly  
once or twice a month  
not at all

In the past month, how often have your compulsive thoughts felt irresistible?

never  
seldom  
sometimes  
**most of the time**  
every time

In the past month, how often have you acted on your compulsion (even if only in part)?

never  
seldom  
**sometimes**  
most of the time  
every time

Thinking over the last year or so, do you feel your compulsive thoughts and behaviour are becoming more or less of a problem for you?

 **More of a problem**                          Less of a problem                            About the same

Often, compulsive thoughts and behaviours are coping mechanisms. Please highlight any of the following ways acting on your compulsion helps you cope (even if the coping is ineffective):

Relieves acute anxiety such as phobia, fear, or superstition  
**Relieves generalized anxiety** , an ill-at-ease feeling that dissipates after acting on the compulsion  
Relieves boredom/ **creates excitement or a “high”**  
Substitutes for another, more dangerous behaviour (such as substance abuse)  
Quiets or blocks out racing/worrisome thoughts, improves sleep, enhances relaxation  
**Sexual gratification**  
Other (specify):

 

Thank you for completing the survey. Your participation is appreciated.

If you feel you are in the midst of a mental health crisis, that you may harm yourself or others, please immediately contact your healthcare provider, dial 9-9-9, or report to your local hospital’s emergency department.

For non-urgent care, _click here_ for a list of mental health resources.

You need not suffer alone. Help is available.

*

Sooner or later, there had to be a case that set him back. John had known it was just a matter of time before Sherlock was asked to consult on a case that involved a fire. He hadn’t, however, anticipated how very spectacular the crime scene would be—a warehouse, massive, nearly an entire city block, burned right down to the ground as the high winds had whipped the flames in unpredictable directions, the intense heat drove the firefighters back, the frigid winter temperatures froze the water in the hoses. It had been a lost cause from the start, and by the time Sherlock and John arrived on the scene early the next afternoon, there was nothing but black and white ash, some metal rods sticking out here and there that had once supported walls and ceiling, and a thin sheet of ice over most of it. The stink of burnt wood—mingled with the chemical reek of burnt paint and melted plastic and every other artificial thing that went into making a modern building—hung thick in the air, sank into the fabric of their clothes. Drifting flakes of ash like snow landed on their shoulders, caught on their hair and eyelashes.

John tried as much as possible to keep the scene at his back, focused intensely on Sherlock’s words and actions, the way the bridge of his nose collapsed into folds as he narrowed his pale eyes in concentration. But none of that crowded out the smoky aroma. And half his mind was preoccupied with imagining what it must have looked like, the flames licking up the inside walls, curling and then creeping across the ceiling, the inexorability of it. The way the fire stole focus from absolutely everything and everyone, turned hot and bright, and grew, and was beautiful. A roar like the ocean, cracks like gun shots. There was no controlling it, only surrendering to it and praying not to be consumed.

“ _John._ Did you hear me just now?”

“Sorry, Sherlock, what?”

“I want you to find out who the owner is, how much insurance, whether he’s paid up on it, what the mortgage was.”

“Right. Easy enough.”

Sherlock had that look, that studious, _What are you about, John Watson?_ look he sometimes got a few days or hours before pronouncing some true thing about him: _the reason you dislike honey is because your mother put it on your toast every morning for twelve years; time to buy a new razor, John; you want me to kiss you—but, oh!—not kiss. **Bite**. Intriguing turn of events, Doctor Watson. _ John was in no mood to be deduced; he stepped away behind a police car and took out his phone. An online search for the information Sherlock requested was a welcome distraction from obsessing about the fire. And as to his other inconvenient reaction, he was thankful for a long and heavy winter jacket to cover it.

Other kids had fixated on learning every scientific name for dinosaurs, or could tell a ’61 Aston Martin from a ’63, or knew the name of every player for Arsenal going back well before the kid himself was born. John had been interested in fires. Bonfire nights were a must-go event, no matter the weather. He begged his dad to build a fire in the fireplace every evening, even in the warmest part of summer. He taught himself how to burn a hole in a scrap of paper with a magnifying glass, stole the flint from the scoutmaster’s pack, insisted on candles on the dinner table, and to have the ones on his birthday cakes relit until they were tiny stumps surrounded by hardened puddles of blue and red wax that ruined the icing. Later, he was the fella in the gang who always had a packet of matches, a plastic cigarette lighter (or later a brass one with someone else’s monogram etched in). His fingers always smelled of lighter fluid and sulfur.

He’d burned down his father’s shed when a fire in a metal rubbish bin got out of his control, and only then was he sent to a psychiatrist, hospitalised, fed pills that made him sluggish and fat and took away every emotion. They’d put him in groups, had him sit with a rotating cadre of therapists who talked to him about appropriate outlets, calming rituals, alternatives to destruction. Did he want to hurt people? No. Did he ever harm animals, even nuisance ones like squirrels or doves? No. Did he hear voices that told him he must burn things? No. Did he feel sexually aroused setting fires, watching fires, smelling the smoke and feeling the heat? John pursed his lips, crossed his arms, slouched and said nothing. They gave him electroshock therapy.

Through force of will and the right blend of antidepressant medication, he’d held his compulsion at bay through the latter part of his youth, all through his medical training (except at exam time, when he more than once found himself flicking spent matches into the toilet, one after the next, until the box was empty). Going to war provided the necessary thrill: explosions, an emergency every minute, doing what he must to save the life of a brother-in-arms. It required a focus more intense than anything he’d experienced in his life, which crowded out every other thought, from having to piss all the way to wanting to watch the mess tent’s panels flapping in billowing clouds of sooty smoke as the ropes that held them burned away. Since he’d met Sherlock Holmes, another sort of heart-pounding thrill was fairly consistently on offer: pulling his gun on bad guys, protecting the life Sherlock was so careless with, running the streets at night a half-step behind the mad, gorgeous genius. With his juvenile records sealed, he’d never brought up his history of intrusive thoughts—so intrusive he couldn’t help but act on them—with his post-army-discharge therapist. He hadn’t thought he’d needed to.

John hated to think that the change in their relationship since the night Sherlock had lowered himself—naked, shivering, half-drunk—into a too-small bed in a quite-nice inn in Dartmoor was to blame for his recent restlessness. It was still early days—they’d been fumbling their way through it for less than three months—but any fool could see where they were headed, and that the two of them evolving from colleagues and friends to. . .whatever they may decide eventually to call it. . .was objectively perfect. Each of them was broken in exactly complementary ways so that when they slotted together, they filled each other’s cracks and could keep most of the darkness from seeping in. It was a comfort to feel—at an age where John was beginning to think he was too set in his ways to ever accommodate another person—as if he were becoming, in some way, settled. Normal. But they’d only been sleeping together a few weeks when John began to recognize his symptoms returning.

His thoughts got stuck, like two lines of a song he couldn’t get out of his head. He took matchbooks from pubs, telling himself they were souvenirs. He lit candles around the flat. He sat in his armchair and fiddled with a brass lighter—not his same one from before, but very like it; Sherlock kept it in a green glass ashtray on the mantel. John hadn’t bought fluid for it yet, but he liked to hold it, roll the striker, think about how it would feel once it was working again. How the flame would be blue at the base, yellow in the center, flickering at the tip. How the lighter would grow too hot to hold, and he would have to grasp it by the flipped-back lid, and eventually flick his wrist to shut it and suffocate the flame. He’d sit there holding the dead lighter, flipping it open and closed, and unspool the vision of lighting it again and again. All at once, he’d realise an hour had passed, lost in his obsessive thought-loop.

He’d got the information about the building’s owner and willed away the earliest hints of an erection. He assiduously kept the crime scene at his back.

“Here, Sherlock. The owner’s a company called Sandia, and the listed owner of _that_ is a woman called Noor al-Marawi. No mortgage. Insurance premiums up to date; looks like it could pay out a couple million. What was it, anyway—storage?”

Sherlock and Lestrade were stood beside a fire truck, sheltering from the wind, and Lestrade was patting his pockets for a packet of cigarettes.

“What I understand,” Lestrade said, “the building was empty.”

“Underused piece of property in a bad part of town,” John theorised, looking to Sherlock for confirmation. “Insurance payout’s more than what they could get selling it? Maybe quicker, too.”

“It was _technically_ empty,” Sherlock said. “On paper, it was. And last night by some stroke of luck or design, it _actually_ was. Usually it’s full of illegal immigrants. Human traffickers use it as a waypoint, just as if they were importing and exporting products—one trafficker delivers them here to wait until the next one takes them farther along.” Lestrade shook two cigarettes from his pack, offered one to Sherlock, who had already begun to reach for it by the time he remembered to give John an apologetic look.

“It’s all right,” John assured, and retrieved from his own pocket a half-used book of matches, struck one and proffered it as Sherlock sucked at the cigarette’s filter. John passed Lestrade the matchbook. “How do you figure—human traffickers?”

Sherlock was studying him again. John cleared his throat and caught his wrist behind his back, tipped his head at Sherlock and held his gaze. Lestrade moved to pass the matches back to John but John ignored him, intent on Sherlock’s face. Sherlock hesitated but eventually wheeled away and gestured, taking a few long strides toward the burnt out foundation. “There in the northeast corner, where the office likely was—the desk, that frame of a chair—there’s a pile of platinum jewelry. If there’s gold, you’ll find it underneath; its melting point is lower but still high enough that most fires wouldn’t destroy it. No one keeps jewelry in an empty warehouse. It wasn’t even in a safe, perhaps just a cardboard bankers box, something that burned away around it. Illegal immigrants often exchange jewelry they’re wearing for the services of smugglers.” Sherlock rubbed his gloved hands together, gave Lestrade a tight grin. “Given proximity to the nearest port, the time of year, and the relevant international political scenarios, I’d guess Tunisian refugees, coming through Belgium. I think you’ll find Ms. Al-Marawi and Sandia have Belgian ties.”

A nearby uniformed officer scribbled notes. Sherlock took a final drag and crushed out most of the still-unsmoked cigarette beneath the toe of his elegant shoe. “I appreciate your effort to keep me engaged, given my recent complaints that clients were becoming a bit thin on the ground,” Sherlock said to Lestrade, “But I assure you I will not be leaving my flat for another case as dull as this one. John?” John exchanged a knowing look with Lestrade, and strode off after Sherlock, already halfway to the main road.

*

John was anxious. Tetchy. He stared. He paced. He retreated to his own bedroom, closed the door, and there came a smell of incense that made Sherlock wonder if perhaps he’d developed a marijuana habit he was trying to cover up. He’d nicked Sherlock’s lighter from the green glass ashtray on the mantel. He said he was going down to Speedy’s to work on his blog, but then left his laptop on the floor under the desk. He seemed relieved when Sherlock ordered him to leave the room because his fingers tapping the arm of his chair was sending Sherlock insane.

“Just tell me,” John muttered, open-mouthed, against Sherlock’s throat, within minutes of their return to the flat after Lestrade’s deadly dull human trafficking/arson case. “Show me. I don’t want to—”

He didn’t finish.

He’d lit candles. Three. One on the dresser, two on the nightstand on John’s side of the bed. The smell was funereal and false, flowers and cinnamon. Sherlock preferred to smell John’s skin, body hair, the dark, low scent of his desire. Their mingled sweat. Even the sharp reek of the stale bed sheets.

John nuzzled against Sherlock’s upper lip, licked into his mouth, dragged Sherlock’s hand up to his face, sniffed and then sucked Sherlock’s first two fingers. Sherlock’s shirt was open, and John worked his chin and mouth and nose beneath the open collar, into the curve where neck became shoulder. He murmured something there, lightly muffled by the cotton of the shirt and Sherlock’s neck as John mouthed at him.

“Tell me how to. . .” John muttered against Sherlock’s ear, one hand reaching for his trousers’ fasteners while the other tangled in his hair.

He wanted Sherlock to lead them. He didn’t want to think. That was what he’d been about to say, then didn’t finish saying. He wanted to surrender; he just didn’t want to say. Sherlock maneuvered them so John was on his back, kissed him hard, guided John’s hand to his chest, pinched John’s fingers to catch his own nipple between them. Pinned John’s shoulders under both hands. Straddled John’s chest and thrust his prick between John’s parted lips. John moaned, made space, clutched Sherlock’s arse with both hands, drawing him deeper.

Even as John’s eyes oozed reflexive tears, they gazed past Sherlock’s hip, and Sherlock could just make out the glints of reflected light before he was overcome, and closed his own eyes.

*

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

“You have to stop asking me that. Part of your inimitable charm, Sherlock, is that you don’t really care whether people are all right.”

“You’re not _people_.”

“The only thing not all right about me at the moment is that I feel like you’re trying to deduce your way right under my skin.”

“I don’t mean to—”

“You promised you wouldn’t. Surface stuff only. You _promised_.”

“I know.”

“Last time I brushed my teeth, what I had for lunch, whether I’m in the mood to fuck. . .all fine. But when you start in with this—taking my temperature, inquiring about my moods—it feels intrusive.”

“Forget I asked.”

“I’d like to.”

“I need time to think.”

“I won’t bother you. Think away.”

*

John’s fingers drummed on the kitchen table until he began to annoy himself. Sherlock was curled in his chair; it was shocking how small he could sometimes get. His eyes were closed. John knew he’d probably be like that for an hour or more. He tried counting to two hundred, didn’t get to one hundred before he was on his feet, in the back of the drawer full of madness where he knew there was a box of wooden kitchen matches, just over half full.

Just a few. He’d go slow. Just a few. Ten at the most.

Sherlock looking too closely at him made him feel picked apart and raw and vulnerable. Which—John supposed—was the sort of feeling one was meant to tolerate from one’s new lovers, as the layers were peeled back to reveal the deeper self: deeper than colleague, deeper than flatmate, deeper than friend. Regardless of what he was meant to tolerate as Sherlock worked to find the space big enough inside John for him to fall into, John was not tolerating it well at all. Change scared him. Drawing Sherlock closer (could he get closer without actually living inside John’s skin? They were already what any psychiatrist worth her salt would label unhealthily enmeshed, codependent, a _folie a deux_ redeemed only by the fact they were on the right side of the law as their mutual madness unfurled.) was a prospect at once thrilling and

_The scratch. The spark. The pop and hiss. A tiny explosion, the smell of sulfur, and then of clean burning wood. He held the thing by its very tip, between thumb and forefinger, and looked into its heart._

terrifying, and John found himself reluctant to be further prodded. Sherlock poked and dug; John bristled. Bristling led to brooding. Brooding led to anxiety. Anxiety wanted relief. The usual things—his substitute coping mechanisms—weren’t working.

_Safety Plan:_

_Change of venue—leave the room, take a walk outside, move away from sources of flame such as fireplaces, candles, etc._

_Reach out to a support person— ~~Mum~~ , ~~Dad~~ , ~~Harry~~. There was no one left. Even the therapist he saw three times a year—at most—didn’t know about it. There was no one._

_Keep hands busy—typing, pen and paper (journaling), polishing shoes, tidying._

_Meditation—breathing exercises, counting._

The match burnt down and down; the round head turned black and dropped off into the sink, and John held on as long as he could stand before his fingertips were singed. He dropped it, it burned for another second—two—and then it was done.

He lit another, watched, waited, dropped.

Another: watched, waited, dropped.

Another, and he held onto it a half-second longer. Burnt his fingertip and hissed a curse under his breath and sucked his finger.

Sherlock’s notebook was on the kitchen table behind him, so John tore two blank sheets from the back of it and balled them up into crinkled wads the size of his fists. Dropping them into the driest corner of the sink, he struck another match (hadn’t he promised himself only a few? The kitchen stank unmistakably of sulfur and smoke). This time the sound of it whooshing to life was soothing, as he knew the precious flame would not go to waste, fizzling suddenly away as if on a sharp inhale. He touched the little orange pyramid to each ball of paper and watched the flame creep into the creases, blackening the edges. He held his palm above it to feel the heat.

_Revised Fucking Safety Plan_

_Change of venue—tell Sherlock, “Come to bed.” If outside flat, drag him into alley or cupboard or public loo._

_Reach out to a support person—Reach for Sherlock’s trousers’ front and hope he doesn’t snarl and bite._

_Keep hands busy—Have a wank. Or give Sherlock a wank._

_Meditation—breathing exercises, counting. Beg Sherlock to fuck throat so deep airway gets cut off. How many times have you got him off in the past 24 hours? Count them up and see. If less than two, start again at top of fucking safety plan._

There was magic in the way the onionskin flecks of ash floated up on the heatwave, the way the flame consumed what was once solid, sliced through its middle, eroded it, took it over and remade it. The paper made soft noises: a steady, unvoiced fricative sound like an exhalation; a gentle unfolding crackle. It surrendered. Succumbed. Changed so profoundly it had all but vanished. The fire subsumed. The fire overcame. Everything else gave up and was transformed.

*

There was a leather-and-wooden trunk in a cavernous, dim, otherwise-empty room in Sherlock’s Mind Palace, full of wooden jigsaw puzzles. They were all the deductions about John which he had promised not to make. To be perfectly precise, the trunk was not full of puzzles but rather of puzzle pieces in a jumbled heap. He did not allow himself to fit them together, though sometimes he kneeled beside the trunk on the rough-hewn wood floor, holding the lid up with one hand, ducking his head and reaching his arm all the way in to stir the pieces with one lazily swirling hand.

He rummaged through them, not looking closely, not mentally fitting any notches into any slots, because it was thus far the only promise John had asked of him, and Sherlock was a man whose word was good, so long as it was not given while he was wearing a disguise. He would not betray his friend’s trust (Were they friends? They were having rather a lot of sex; they were more than friends by now, surely), any more than he would make himself a liar. It was a matter of principle, and so he stirred the puzzle pieces, caressing with his callused fingertips, but did not move to assemble the full pictures they made up.

The room was lit by a yellowish overhead bulb, yet all at once there was a sharp, round smell of sulfur, and the hiss of a wick, unmistakably a match being struck and a candle being lit. Sherlock stopped stirring, only traced his fingertips around the edges of a puzzle piece or two (they weren’t related; that was as far as he would go). There came a scratching sound, then a puff, and a sizzle. There was a draft there where he knelt on the floor, but it was warm as breath. There was weight on his thigh, and a tickle up his belly toward his chest that made him curl his shoulders forward, nearly dropping the lid of the trunk onto his own head.

Out the heavy door of the high-ceilinged room, down the corridor following signs reading Way Out, and the Mind Palace was rippling and fading, evaporating all around him, before he even reached the front door. He blinked his eyes and when they opened, there was John, knelt on the floor of the sitting room just in front of him, with his hand on Sherlock’s hip, thumb tucked into the waistband of Sherlock’s trousers, and his face was digging in against Sherlock’s low belly, his breath hot, softly murmuring many things, but all Sherlock could be certain of was his own name in John’s mouth.

“John?” It wasn’t like him to disturb Sherlock when he was thinking, not even for yet more of the sex they’d been having these past several months. John hummed a loud groan that sounded nothing like arousal and everything like deep despair, and when he raised his head to meet Sherlock’s gaze, he couldn’t hold it—instead turned his focus away from Sherlock’s face.

“ _Please. Sherlock_.”

There followed a fumbling stumble to Sherlock’s bedroom, John clutching, both of them tripping over each other’s feet. As they passed through the kitchen it was obvious to Sherlock in under three seconds that John had been burning something in the kitchen sink. John offered his fingers to be licked and sucked; they tasted flinty, with a hint of woodsmoke. As John tugged at Sherlock’s zip, Sherlock registered the whiff of burnt paper from the other side of the kitchen. As they crashed together into the bedroom, John begged Sherlock to _make me, tell me, let me please you, show me how to get you off, just show me. . .tell me. . .make me, Sherlock. . .I’ll do whatever you want. . ._

John knelt, unfastening Sherlock’s trousers as he stood beside the bed. Even as he worked the hook and the button, John carried on muttering, moaning, _fuck me, Sherlock, fuck my mouth, whatever you want, then after you can bend me over, yeah?_ Sherlock let out a too-loud gasp at that, and John’s voice dropped lower as he went on, _Yes. Sherlock. have me, make me, make it hurt, I don’t care, I want it. . ._

He yanked Sherlock’s trousers down around his thighs, licked his own hand, stroked and rolled Sherlock’s bollocks, gripped his prick at the base. His last words: _Just take me over, Sherlock_. . . _please_. . .and he opened his mouth, clutched at Sherlock’s buttock to urge him closer. Sherlock went along, thrusting harder, deeper, than he ever had before, and John gagged a bit but carried on, and the rougher Sherlock rocked into his mouth, the more John moaned around him, vaguely nodding his head, by then with both hands on Sherlock’s arse, pulling hard. Sherlock’s hands caressed John’s face, the trails of watery-eyed tears, then his hair that wanted trimming.

A few long minutes, John sometimes humming around him, sometimes silent as he held his breath, Sherlock’s cock deep in his mouth, in his throat, and Sherlock skated the edge but eventually persuaded John to relax back, sitting on his heels, wide-eyed and slope-shouldered, waiting. Sherlock leaned to open John’s nightstand and John was distracted by opening his own trousers, standing, turning, bending to drop them and kick them aside, boxers, too. Sherlock had a theory (some of the puzzle pieces fit themselves together without input from him, and the pictures these made were too important to ignore), and to test it, instead of fetching out a tube of slick or a condom, he’d reached for a plastic cigarette lighter and a pornographic magazine. He touched the flame of the lighter to the corner of the creased pages and held it in front of his chest. When John turned back to face him, his mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.

“Don’t think, John. Tell me what you see.”

A whisper: “Fire.”

Sherlock gently rippled his wrist, and the flames crept just a bit quicker up the long edge of the pages. “What does it mean?”

“Danger.”

“What does it do?”

John stood silent, stared at the flames, and the expression on his face was so full of shame Sherlock second-guessed himself. But if he was going to save John Watson from himself, he had to understand. John licked his lips.

Sherlock tried, “Get on your knees,” and John sank readily to the floor. “What does it do?”

John’s answer came out on a groan of sexual arousal: “Annihilates.”

“Look at it and tell me what you feel.” Sherlock had to turn the book slightly to avoid the flames licking his fingers; tiny flecks of ash—some still burning at the corners—began to float down between their bodies, Sherlock standing, John kneeling. “Tell me quick.”

“I want to be annihilated. I want you to. . .”

John looked at the floor, avoiding Sherlock’s gaze, but his hand was on his cock, tugging, stroking, and he began to pant in time with it.

“Want me to what?”

“Fuck me.”

Sherlock shook his head. “That’s not it. The truth.” The paper was burning hot and quick; Sherlock wouldn’t be able to hold onto it much longer.

“I want you to take me over,” John murmured, and began to chant it as he worked his prick. “Take me—over. Take me—over. Take me— _oh, fuck!_ —take me over. . .”

Sherlock was an instant away from singed fingertips, and dropped what was left, still burning, into the metal waste bin beside the wardrobe. There were used face-tissues in it, and torn up junk mail, and it flared up momentarily—John turned his face to watch—then there was an unpleasant, chemical smell as the flames found used condoms and their discarded foil packets. Sherlock went to one knee, gripped John’s shoulders, leaned close to his face, mouthed at his jaw.

“You want to surrender,” he prompted, and John nodded. “You want to be ravaged. And you want it to be irresistible, overpowering.”

“Fuck, yes,” John choked out. Sherlock reached between them and forced John’s hand away from his prick, drawing a low growl of protest, but John went along.

“Let me,” Sherlock demanded, and quick-licked his palm, his fingers tasting of the soot of chemical-coated paper. He began to stroke John in forceful rhythm. “I’ll tell you what I want. I’ll show you what I want. I want you to come. I want you shuddering. I want you shouting. I want you to spurt in my hand.” John’s head rolled half-circles on his neck, and he bit his lips and whined, gripped Sherlock’s forearm. “Give me what I want, John. Let go. Let me have control. Let me take you over.”

John came with a bitten-off shout, throwing his head back and then forward, shivering hard as he sank against Sherlock’s shoulder.

“Now finish me,” Sherlock demanded, before John’s head had time to clear, and dragged John up by a hand around his elbow to kneel beside the bed as Sherlock sat on its edge, leaning back on flat palms so he could lift his hips and thrust hard into John’s mouth. John hummed, whimpered, and his fingers dug into the bedclothes beside Sherlock’s hips. In just a few moments, Sherlock gripped John’s chin and shoved him away just far enough to come across his parted lips, his tongue, his cheek and chin.

John scrubbed his sleeve against his mouth, got to his feet. He looked despairing.

“I can help you,” Sherlock said evenly.

John shook his head.

“It’s bigger than you. You can’t imagine.”

Before Sherlock could find words of reassurance—before he’d slotted together a plan—John turned and left the room, fetching his discarded clothing as he went. Sherlock listened to his receding footsteps as he went up to his bedroom, and the door clicked shut behind him.

*

“What’s this?” John accepted the folded-up, colourful paper Sherlock offered him, days later in the sitting room. They’d been having desperate, almost wordless sex in the intervening time, and neither brought up what Sherlock had deduced. They grew closer together in their shared silences; all the things they knew but never under any circumstances said aloud.

“My way of helping.”

John unfolded it as Sherlock assumed an origami-fold of his own, tucking his long limbs into his favourite armchair. It was a map of London. There were small black X’s inked here and there all over it—perhaps fifty of them.

“Can’t have you getting arrested, especially now I’ve grown accustomed to our recently more intimate relationship,” Sherlock said, half-smiling, casual, though the weight of his gesture settled quickly over them both as he clarified what he had made. “These will incur zero risk to human life, and minimal risk to surrounding property. Emergency response times in these parts of the city are slow enough to allow what needs to be done, yet quick enough to prevent outright disaster.”

John wanted to vomit. He wanted to weep.

“In the interest of your own safety, as well as that of others, should any of these sites. . .become.  . . _necessary_ for you, please do allow me to re-check before you. . .visit.” Sherlock collapsed his hands together in front of his chest, as if in prayer. “We can set up a code of some kind, communicate via text or email; I know you prefer not to discuss it aloud.”

“Sherlock. . .” John cleared his throat. Of course Sherlock would do something like this. Facilitate crime to save John going mad, to save John the shame of giving in to his compulsion. _Of course_ he would. He was a pragmatist. He’d thought of everything.

“You have protected my life in countless ways, John. Saved me from my own clouded judgments, stopped me leaping in feet first without measuring the depth.” His voice lowered. “Please let me do you the same courtesy.”

John’s mouth turned down hard at the corners; his throat was thick with gratitude. He folded it up and slipped it into the breast pocket of his shirt.

“Thank you, Sherlock. It’s very kind,” he said at last, and cleared muck from his throat, blinked his eyes. Another _harrumph_ , and John watched his own fingers worrying at the fabric of the chair’s arm; he could feel Sherlock watching him, but tenderly. “Grown accustomed, you say?” John tried for a smile, almost succeeded. Sherlock unwound himself and got to his feet, dragging his long palm across John’s shoulder as he passed, beckoning John to follow him to his bedroom. John was halfway there when he heard Sherlock strike a match to light John’s bedside candles.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> @FicAuthorPoppy  
> fuckyeahfightlock.tumblr

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Cover Art] for Safety Plan](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6561532) by [justacookieofacumberbatch (buffyholic)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buffyholic/pseuds/justacookieofacumberbatch)




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